Senate votes to scold MoveOn for war ad

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The Senate yesterday overwhelmingly condemned the liberal anti-war group MoveOn.org for its newspaper ad that last week accused the top U.S. general in Iraq of lying and misrepresenting the situation on the ground, a measure on which Democratic leaders had refused to allow a vote last week.

The nonbinding measure, offered by Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, passed by a vote of 72-25, with 24 Democrats and one independent, Bernard Sanders of Vermont, voting against it.

The furor over the ad (download pdf), which Republicans up to and including President Bush have denounced, has not subsided since it ran last week. It again placed Democrats on the defensive yesterday, and both House Minority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri and House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio yesterday called for a similar resolution in the lower chamber.

"Denouncing this unconscionable assault on Gen. David Petraeus' integrity in a bipartisan manner would signal to the American people that these tactics have no place in our political discourse," Mr. Blunt said.

Mr. Boehner also urged House Democratic leaders "to immediately schedule a vote ... to condemn the despicable attacks launched against this honorable man by a radical left-wing political organization."

But House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, declined to commit to any such measure.

The president got involved in the furor yesterday, calling the MoveOn ad "disgusting" at a White House press conference.

"I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democratic Party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad," Mr. Bush said. "And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org — or more afraid of irritating them than they are of irritating the United States military."

While 22 of the 49 Senate Democrats voted yesterday to condemn the ad, none of the four with White House ambitions did.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the Democratic presidential front-runner, voted against the Senate measure, as did Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut. Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Barack Obama of Illinois skipped the vote, which the latter denounced as an effort to score "cheap political points," adding that the Senate should focus on ending the war, "not on criticizing newspaper advertisements."